"The Internet and the Law - A Global Conversation" will be held at the University of Ottawa on Friday, October 1st and Saturday, October 2nd, 2004. Bringing together leading academics from 16 countries, including Lawrence Lessig, David Post, Bernt Hugenholtz, Graham Greenleaf, and Ian Walden, the conference will explore comparative approaches to intellectual property law, e-commerce, Internet regulation, and developmental issues.

As anyone following the online music debate knows, the recording industry regularly blames teenagers for the popularity of peer-to-peer file sharing. The Canadian Recording Industry Association has often cited the need for "education" so that teenagers might buy into its vision of copyright law.

The success of the ringtone market, which undoubtedly owes much to those same teenagers, contradicts that claim, illustrating not only that teens are willing to pay for digital music, but that they are willing to overpay for such music.

BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) is working on an Open Source video codec. Many video codecs are proprietary, and this has been one of the limitations people observe when trying to operate with a completely free/libre computing platform.

The BBC seems to be doing quite a few publicly-minded projects, including their Creative Archive which will include content under Creative Commons licenses.

Canadians should ask: where is the CBC in this movement? (Hint: CBC download references a large number of proprietary vendors, including referencing proprietary codecs from RealNetworks and Apple for audio/video)

MPs with positions relevant to copyright reform

This page is an attempt to identify the most relevant MPs from
the perspective of copyright reform. If you are a constituent for
one of these MPs, you can help ensure that they are well-educated
on the issues.

For the third year in a row, software companies are supplying schools with materials that promote their antipiracy position on copyright law. But for the first time this year, the library association is presenting its own material, hoping to give kids a more balanced view of copyright law.

We decided on open source for our development model for both pragmatic and philosophical reasons. The open source community is a natural ally of the library community. Both try to enrich their members through sharing and disseminating knowledge, and both are open to everyone, private or public, commercial or non-commercial.

On August 28, 2004, we will celebrate the first annual Software Freedom Day. On that day, we will make the world aware of the virtues of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS), and encourage its widespread use.

This is a global grassroots marketing campaign in which we are inviting volunteers from around the world to participate.

Imagine an Ontario government initiative that responded to rising concern over speeding on provincial highways by installing hundreds of automated radar guns to identify cars that failed to obey the speed limit. Rather than sending a speeding ticket to those caught by the system, however, the government instead sent a bailiff to confiscate the car keys